Becoming Conan
by FS
Summary: For months, he has been having recurring dreams of a pond or a lake (sometimes it's even a river or a sea): and there she is, on the other side of the night—a faraway figure whose silhouette is all too easily recognizable... (a short story in seven parts)
1. Red

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

* * *

 **Becoming Conan**

 _by FS_

* * *

 ** _Chapter 1: Red_**

* * *

 _For months, he has been having recurring dreams of a pond or a lake (sometimes it's even a river or a sea): and there she is, on the other side of the night—a faraway figure whose silhouette is all too easily recognizable._

c.

Between them, trust has been difficult to build and hard to maintain. But once it has developed into something more personal and intimate, Shinichi can't help but compare it to the proverbial red string of fate. Invisible, invincible, inscrutable.

c.

"What have you been reading?" she asks in a half-amused, half-mocking tone. Judging by his facial expressions, he has been wading through a whole dictionary of contradicting emotions.

He looks up from the small hardcover in his hands with an expression of childish, wide-eyed wonder.

"Conan Doyle's biography—or rather a few papers on Doyle's private life and how it might have affected his writings."

"What's so disturbing and amazing about it?" Her tone sounds a little too curious for her taste. "You've been pulling grimaces for over ten minutes!"

An eternity of silence passes, punctuated only by her impatient sigh, the rustle of trees, and the clink of the spoon against the china cup.

"I've noticed certain inconsistencies in the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I didn't expect to find the answers here." She can discern a slight hesitation in his movements before he decisively closes the book and pushes it towards her. "I can give you my copy if you want to read it. I'd like to hear your opinion."

"Which inconsistencies do you mean?" She is stirring her hot chocolate for longer than she needs, but she enjoys the warmth radiating from the cup and the anticipation of the imminent pleasure almost as much as the actual act of consumption. "After all, Doyle seldom reread his own stories and inserted enough plot holes for a century of rewritings and pastiches."

He follows the circular movement of the spoon in her hand with puzzled attention.

"The mystery of Watson's wife. The timeline of Watson's marriage and widowhood doesn't really make sense, but I initially thought Doyle's memory had failed him."

"So it's not a coincidence that he messed up the timeline?" she asks, redundantly. Maybe she should measure the passing time by the clink of the spoon against the cup. It would turn time into an entity she can easily control.

"I don't know it for sure, but I'd like to interpret it as the sort of signs authors subconsciously insert into their writings. Do tell me what you think about the paper after you've read it!"

"Before or after I've finished the latest complete annotated edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels you've sent me?" She is stirring her chocolate with luxurious, hypnotic languidness, relishing the serenity which only arrives when she is no longer aware of the passing time.

"Before." He flashes her a rare playful smile although she believes to see a strange glint of anxiety in his eyes. "This is urgent!"

"I'll read it tonight then."

Now that the spell is broken, time has resumed its natural course; and the chocolate, slightly cooler but also sweeter than expected, is being dealt with in an unemotional, business-like manner.

c.

Arthur Conan Doyle met his future wife Louisa ("Louise", "Mary Louise", or "Touie") Hawkins in 1885, when he treated her brother Jack, who was dying from cerebral meningitis, as a resident patient in his own home (Doyle had offered the Hawkinses to stay at his place since Jack, Louisa, and their mother were about to be evicted from their lodgings due to Jack's seizures). Even though Jack didn't survive, Louisa was so taken by the young doctor's kindness that she fell in love with him after her brother's passing. Arthur Conan Doyle, too, was impressed by Louisa Hawkins' unusual sweetness. The couple married shortly afterwards and had two children together.

Their marriage, built on tenderness that arose from grief and compassion, was remarkably happy and comfortable, and Arthur Conan Doyle's literary career took off when he created the quintessential detective in the figure of Sherlock Holmes…

Thus, in _The Sign of Four_ , the second Sherlock Holmes novel, Watson finds love with Mary Morstan, and the marriage which follows their courtship separates Watson, who is now preoccupied with his new love, from his friend and partner Holmes.

 _A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marveled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us._ ( _The Sign of Four_ , by Arthur Conan Doyle).

c.

It's reassuring to know that she can still trust his limitless ability to disappoint, Shiho thinks after skimming the summary on the dust jacket of the hardcover Kudo-kun has given her. After burying the book at the bottom of her suitcase and pushing the suitcase back into the closet, she pauses for a moment at the large double bed. He has made no secret of the fact that _The Sign of Four_ is his favourite Sherlock Holmes story because he adores the Watson/Morstan romance. _She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste._ […] _Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic._ Replace "blonde" with "dark" and eliminate the anachronistic "well gloved", and the passage introducing Mary Morstan might as well be describing Ran.

Last night Kudo-kun told her during an uncommonly sentimental surge of emotion that she was one of the few people he could trust with his life. He even stressed that the emotional bond between them was the most intense and intimate he had ever known. Of course she must be exaggerating and romanticizing the situation, and his "intense and intimate" was only a misleading choice of word. Eroded by time and distance—emotional and physical, real and imagined—their erstwhile dependence on each other has morphed into the sort of long-time friendship one would seldom spare a thought of but would also never question. He still occasionally messages her to ask her for her opinion on personal matters while she still needs time to figure out how to reply to his messages like a normal platonic friend would. Seven years after she left Ai and he left Conan behind, his trust in her intuition and her trust in his obtuseness remain the only two things that haven't changed with time.

c.

* * *

A/N: I'm posting this fic during the CoAi week which Momo&Co have organized on Tumblr (you can find the links and details on Momo Cicerone's profile) because the prompts for the CoAi week have inspired me to divide this story into seven short chapters. Since the plunny for this story was born long before I knew about the prompts and the prompts only appear as easter eggs in the respective chapters, however, I'm not sure whether I should post this story independently from the event or not. I'll update it on the same days nonetheless.

Other people are going to write and draw for the CoAi week as well. From the things I've seen and read by now, I'm sure it will be a treat for ConanAi fans. ;)


	2. Orange

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

* * *

 **Becoming Conan**

 _by FS_

* * *

 ** _Chapter 2: Orange_**

* * *

They've been partners in crime but never partners in love (not even when "partners" is preceded by "casual", "former", or "one-time"). And though he knows that the mere attempt at changing this aspect of their relationship is out of the question, he has the feeling that protecting her and Ran from the Organization back then was easier than protecting them now—when his own weakness is the source of danger but parting from her would be like giving up life itself.

c.

Conan Doyle's father passed away in 1893, the year which ended Doyle's domestic happiness. Louisa was diagnosed with consumption (which is now called "tuberculosis") and was given only a few months to live. Although there was no known cure for consumption, Conan Doyle resolved not to let his beloved wife die. Since there was evidence that the healthier climate in Switzerland could bring some improvement, he arranged a move to Davos, Switzerland.

Sherlock Holmes might have brought his creator great fame and fortune, but Sherlock Holmes was to his creator also a source of great annoyance—and Doyle began to develop a mild weariness against this "automaton", which grew into implacable hatred as time went by. "I couldn't revive him [Sherlock Holmes] if I would, at least not for years," so Conan Doyle wrote to a friend later, "for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day."

To escape the pressure of churning out new Sherlock Holmes mysteries for the monthly publications in _The Strand Magazine_ and to make time for what he considered more serious work, Doyle let his iconic consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and Holmes' mysterious nemesis James Moriarty fall to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland—the 120-metre waterfall Doyle considered picturesque and terrifying enough to become the grave of his troubled hero.

 _A few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. An examination by experts leaves little doubts that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation._ ("The Final Problem", in _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ , by Arthur Conan Doyle).

After finishing "The Final Problem", which he intended to be the very last Sherlock Holmes story, Doyle wrote only two words into his diary:

"Killed Holmes."

Louisa's health improved in Switzerland, but it wasn't easy for either Conan or Louisa to live so far away from home…

c.

Although the two-floor holiday chalet with three separate bedrooms and a porch isn't small by any definition of the word, it feels (or rather sounds) cramped with all the kids and adults shuffling along the corridors in flip-flops and rubber sandals, and Shiho tries hard to enjoy the fleeting luxury of having a bedroom to her own before the next guest changes this situation. At least—so she consoles herself—the visits have been so timed as to duration that the house will always be full but never overcrowded. Eri-san, the Eternal Drunk, and Kudo-kun's parents had left the isle by the time the Professor and the Detective Boys arrived; and Tsuburaya-kun, Kojima-kun, and Ayumi-chan drove off the day before yesterday to make room for Hattori-kun's family and her. Shiho strongly suspects that Kudo-kun has intentionally prevented Tsuburaya-kun from meeting her although she finds Kudo-kun's attempt at helping the boy get over his crush on her futile at best. Admittedly, distance is an effective remedy for unrequited love. But it's no use hiding her from Tsuburaya-kun since she is going on a camping trip with the Professor and the Detective Boys next month.

Looking about the small bedroom once again to make sure that everything is in order, Shiho wonders how she is going to protect her secret while sharing the room with a detective. She would have preferred sharing her room with the twins; but since the Professor is already sleeping in the living room, Sera-san would have to share the bed with Shiho or with either of the married couples. In view of this predicament, it was only natural that Shiho had no choice but agree to share a room with "Masumi-chan" while the children had to stay with their respective parents, much to everyone's disappointment.

c.

The weather is excellent, however, and in spite of her frustration over Watson and Mary Morstan aka Mr and Mrs Kudo, Shiho enjoys the rare sight of golden sunlight filtering through the slats of the blue-painted windows. In the course of the years, she has come to appreciate the little things which will always lift her mood: a brisk walk through one of the nicer districts of the city, a leisurely stroll through the woods; the sight of water shimmering in the sunlight, the warmth of a late summer afternoon…

The sight of her latest travel notebook also brightens her mood. It must be either the uplifting peach-coloured linen cover or the smooth copper-coloured satin bookmark, or the illustrated warning on the first page ("Read this without permission and die!")—or the worrisome fact that it contains all the conversations she has had with him ever since she came here in longhand, albeit abridged. It would have been safer to use shorthand, she has to admit in retrospect, but she didn't want to since she associates shorthand notes with her work for the Organization and she prefers to see the words spelled out on paper.

No sooner has she opened the notebook to jot down their post-breakfast talk about Conan Doyle's private life and the mystery of Watson's wife than the door flies open and Chandler comes tumbling in, followed by Christie, who never seems to leave his side. Shiho doesn't know what disturbs her more: the fact that their mystery-obsessed father has given them nicknames reminiscent of noir and whodunnit novels or the realization that she has forgotten their real names after using their sobriquets for so long.

"Why didn't you go to the beach with us today?" asks Christie—the serious, precocious one—while Chandler is eyeing Shiho's notebook in fascination.

Distant memories of another summer at the beach come flooding back, and Shiho is momentarily distracted by the images of seagulls and dolphins and sharks sailing in the blue sky. In her hair, she can also feel the wind—slightly cooler than she likes it—and in her hand another hand (warmer than hers) in a firm, reassuring grip.

It was sunny today but still too cold for her to swim, she explains to Christie and takes Chandler into her lap. "Don't ever read other people's diaries and notebooks!" she dramatically preaches. "Unless you have to solve a mystery, you should protect other people's secrets as if they were your own!"

"What colour are you?" asks Chandler with a child's disturbing talent to hop topics (she is glad they aren't going to repeat the game of "What animal are you?" and "What vehicle are you?") while Christie solemnly informs her, "You're a mystery, says otousan."

"I'm Red. And I'm sure your otousan says that about everyone!"

Shiho demonstratively flips her hair, rolls her eyes, and purses her lips, whereupon the kids, who have been following her movements in the mirror opposite the bed, crack the same beatific smile.

"You aren't Red—you're Orange!" Chandler declares, ruffling her hair. "As orange as this book here!"

Since he only holds the book in his tiny hand and brushes his fingers against the linen cover without trying to open it, Shiho relents. Just let him play, she tells herself. After all, what can happen?

"So I'm Orange?" She smirks. "As orange as a peach, or an apricot, or a tangerine? All the delicious things?" She doesn't ask them what colour they are, knowing from experience that Chandler would only say that he was Orange, too, and that Christie would declare that Orange is dull.

"Obachan says you either love or hate orange. There is no in-between!" interjects Christie instead. Children are unpredictable, as Shiho has had to learn over and over again.

"I love orange," declares Chandler, as expected, and snuggles against Shiho's chest. Unexpectedly, Christie admits that she loves orange, too, and compares it to autumn leaves and fire and sunsets.

"My otousan loves _me_ , though!" Christie sobs. Knowing that she can burst into tears within seconds at this age, Shiho hastens to soothe the girl lest another drama happens.

"Of course he loves you—just like he loves Chandler and your mother, too!"

"Really?" Christie blinks, visibly debating with herself whether she should laugh or cry. "I've heard obachan and otousan talk, though. Otousan said he was only in love with you!"

c.


	3. Yellow

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

 **Becoming Conan**

 _by FS_

* * *

 ** _Chapter 3: Yellow_**

* * *

It's curious that hope is seldom associated with poisons and toxins or hard drugs although it often has the same effects. Enjoyed in small doses, it clouds your mind, warps your judgement, and corrupts your character. A massive dose of hope leads to fatal consequences. But instead of protecting their children from hope, adults teach them to believe in dreams and illusions and to wish for the impossible to happen.

c.

Young Conan Doyle's great consulting detective was originally named "Sherrinford Hope" after the Arctic whaler Hope, on which Doyle worked in 1880. Forty years later, Doyle misspelled (or misremembered?) the name as "Sherringford Hope" in his autobiography _Memoirs and Adventures_.

Back in those days it was common for medical students to serve on whaling vessels for an extended time to collect practical experiences. A classmate who had been assigned for Hope couldn't take part in the journey and offered his place to Doyle, who eagerly grasped the opportunity. Doyle kept an illustrated diary about his days onboard, which was later published under the title _Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure_.

Louisa thought that "Hope" would be a terrible name for a hero, however, and convinced her husband to change his mind. Hence "Sherrinford Hope" was changed into "Sherrinford Holmes", which was eventually changed into "Sherlock Holmes" when Doyle replaced the fussy "Sherrinford" with the snappier and edgier "Sherlock". The consulting detective's sidekick underwent similar name changes. And thus the pair Sherrinford Hope and Ormond Sacker are now known as Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.

And yet Conan Doyle—a closet romantic and spiritualist—couldn't resist the allure of the name "Hope" and seemed to have craved to see it in print, for he recycled it and gave it to Jefferson Hope, the first of the Canon's tragic villain.

c.

Shiho's first impulse is to dismiss the revelation as a joke. These things often happen whenever children are involved: they mishear things, imagine things, blow things out of proportion with their overactive, paranoid fantasy.

Just think of _The Children's Hour_! One barefaced lie in which the children believed themselves. A naughty fantasy which turned out to be so close to the truth that it led to scandal and tragedy.

But like the lethal poison dart that killed Bartholomew in _The Sign of Four_ , or the seven-percent solution of cocaine with which Sherlock Holmes injected himself, the seed of hope has hit a vulnerable target, and the poison or hard drug has begun to take effect. Why shouldn't it be true? Christie is an uncommonly observant child! Christie has no reason to invent this if it didn't happen, and Christie has never lied about these things before.

Like coloured patterns seen through a kaleidoscope, all the ambiguous things Kudo-kun—Shinichi!—has ever said and done (all the memories Shiho has preserved in her mind and in her diaries for over seven years) are now showing themselves from a multitude of different angles, shedding their muted hues rapidly as if they had been hit by a sudden burst of light suffusing them with brilliant colour. The impossible has become possible. The possible is now within her reach! She is dealing with a problem she has never expected now that her feelings are requited.

She can feel she is glowing with the unfamiliar intensity and radiance of the people who are deliriously happy, and it's easy for her to laugh in front of the two children who, at this age, are still easy to manipulate. Your obachan and your otousan are only testing you. Why else should they have been so loud that you would overhear their private talk? Your otousan has challenged you so often—this is just another challenge. Whisper what you've heard to a pebble at the beach or reveal it to your teddy at night, but keep your mouth shut so that no one else will know. Can you keep it a secret from other people (your playmates, your friends, your mother), or are you the weak type that always needs to blabber?…

Hollywood movies, comics, anime, and manga (well, popular culture in general) like to pretend that it's important to tell children the truth—as if children could handle the truth at this age when the truth is even for adults a bitter pill to swallow. Kids won't ever understand, and one can't expect them to. One can only talk to them in their own language, lie to them whenever one needs to, tell them parables and fairy tales in the hope that they will distill the message. But despite their naiveté, children are nimbler and more intelligent than adults—that is, before all their edges have been broken off and smoothed down at school.

Chandler is still playing with Shiho's diary, too distracted to pay attention to anything Christie and Shiho are saying; and Shiho misuses the happy coincidence that they're talking in both Japanese and English (he wants his children to grow up bilingual, and she has been supporting him) to explain the difference between the transitory state of "being in love" and the action of "loving".

When you're in love with someone or something, you're addicted. It's like your weakness for coca cola, or Conan Doyle's passion for pâté de foie gras. You obsess over it, long for it, and get sick over the thought that you aren't getting enough of it. But sometimes you will also fall ill when you finally get what you wanted. More often than not, it's better not to get too much of what you've longed for.

"I got sick when I drank two bottles of coca cola," Christie agrees, much to Shiho's relief. The drama has been averted. Mission accomplished.

If you love something, it's like the favourite dish you will always return to after a short break (and sometimes loving it takes a lot of work—your parents have quarrelled sometimes, haven't they?—but it's good for you). It's like the ice-cream you eat whenever we go out, or even more like the natural mineral water you drink every day. You don't always notice how good it is, and you often take it for granted, but you actually need it much more than you know…

She can tell that Christie is bored now—she is bored by herself as well. She has been at school for too long, Shiho realizes. All she can do is to hold a sermon and lie.

c.

During dinner, Shiho follows Shinichi's every gesture and word with fresh ears and eyes, dragging all of them into the sunlight to behold them like she has never beheld them before. No longer distracted by her own glum thoughts, she can feel his gaze resting fondly on her face although he is chivalrously keeping his distance, caring for his young wife with the matter-of-fact attention of a man who would take care of anyone.

It's not like Ran and he aren't affectionate towards each other—it's obvious that they still like each other very much. It's certainly not Ran's fault for not sharing her husband's love of mysteries either—Ran has a much finer taste of literature than Shinichi. They have had common interests before, when Ran could still assist Shinichi with his cases. She didn't do it very well back then and she often got nightmares from the sight of the corpses—but she often protected her impulsive husband in situations which would have cost him more than a scratched arm or blue leg if she hadn't been there.

Yet the gulf between them, however small in the beginning, must have grown during the years. How else could Shinichi have fallen in love with her? Ran is messaging Sera-san, who is going to arrive sooner than expected, while shaking her head at her husband's two-millionth retelling of _The Sign of Four_ and _A Study in Scarlet_. Maybe Sherlock Holmes was the one who broke their rapport. Marriages fall apart for the strangest reasons.

"It's a terrible novel!" she bursts out at last. "I've tried to read it more than once. But I can't get over the first half of it! Sorry."

"It's not the best Sherlock Holmes story." Shiho supports her since she can see that Shinichi is about to defend his favourite books at the cost of his domestic life. "Maybe you should try the short stories instead. 'The Red-Headed League' has a very charismatic villain."

"Who Holmes sends to jail," Ran says, as a matter of fact. "John Clay was one of the few villains I liked. He was loyal to his friend. He should have escaped—but Doyle absolutely had to punish the 'bad guy'."

"John Clay is modelled on the same person who inspired Moriarty…" Shinichi begins in an attempt to change the topic.

"I know," Ran sighs. "You've told me this many, many times."

"What colour are you now?" asks Chandler, who has an uncanny sense of timing and knows when to intervene so that his parents won't fight over Sherlock Holmes. The amazing boy also possesses the unique gift for seeing and accepting the passing nature of all things—of taking nothing in life for granted and accepting everything that happens with the philosophical nonchalance of a zen master.

"I'm Yellow now," Shiho spontaneously decides. Yellow conjures up Van Gogh's many sunflowers and chrysanthemums—tokens of friendship and the symbol of neglected love. Yellow also brings to mind the gorgeous yellow roses Archer sent his beloved Olenska. "As yellow as sunlight," she adds with a smug grin. "As yellow as the beach."

"You aren't yellow-mellow, though, or yellow-bellied," Christie says, flaunting her English.

Yellow is the colour of honour, loyalty, intellect, joy, optimism, and courage, Hattori-kun muses. It's a good colour which aids the left side of the brain.

"As yellow as cream and mustard." Ran winks at Shiho. "Yellow is a good colour! I love cream."

"No, you don't love cream but you're _in love_ with cream," Christie points out. And Shiho breaks out in a cold sweat when the girl proceeds to elaborate on the differences between loving and being in love, explaining that Shiho has told her that being in love is like craving coca cola while loving is like drinking mineral water.

Shinichi, who has deduced the context of the talk, is flushing; and Hattori-kun, who has caught the scent of mystery, is now watching Shiho and Shinichi with his glowing cat's eyes. Thankfully, Ran and Kazuha-san are too busy chatting with Sera-san to notice. For the first time in her life, however, Shiho doesn't suppress the thought that she would have been a much better match for Shinichi than Ran since she likes his quirks more than Ran does. She can assist him during his cases, discuss mystery novels with him since she shares his love for the genre, challenge him whenever he needs to be challenged… Life with her would have been more exciting and fulfilling for him and her, and Ran is the type who would have easily found someone else she could have been happy with. And the fact that it's not her but Ran who is wearing the gold ring matching his is a mere result of external circumstances—another cruel prank of either time or fate, which let him return her feelings only when it's already too late.

c.

She is glad to be alone in her bedroom again after dinner, after doing the dishes and feigning a migraine so that they'll let her sleep. And since she needs something to take her mind off this emotional rollercoaster and prevent herself from drowning in a (yellow) sea of jealousy and grief, she gets out the hardcover Kudo-kun has given her to see what he wanted her to read.

She doesn't get past the first pages since she can't bear to look at the photos of Louisa Doyle—gentle, sweet Mary Louise who was athletic and so extremely Ran-like that it hurts.

Would a marriage with Shiho have been better for Shinichi, or would it have taken the same downward spiral with the occasional high when both of them were in a great mood and everything went well in life? Shiho should have admitted that Ran was right about _The Sign of Four_ since she can't stand the novel either. Shinichi has recommended it to her as well but she couldn't get through the first half. Would life have been the same if Shinichi and she had married? Would he be pining for Ran because "the very essence of romance is uncertainty", as Oscar Wilde put it?

c.

Most Sherlock Holmes fans know about the surgeon Joseph Bell, Doyle's mentor at Edinburgh University's medical school, whose singular observation and deduction skills had inspired young Conan Doyle to invent Sherlock Holmes—but few people know that Conan Doyle has modelled the great detective on Oscar Wilde as well.

Doyle and Wilde met in 1889 during a dinner at the Langham Hotel in London's Regent Street. Both writers had been invited by John Marshall Stoddart, the managing director of the flourishing American _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_ , who had come to London to launch the UK edition. The stodgy Conan Doyle and the flamboyant Oscar Wilde must have made a very contrasting pair at the dinner table, but Conan Doyle called the meeting "a golden evening" in his autobiography—the evening having been tinted "golden" by his fascination with Wilde.

Thus the science-loving, eccentric Sherlock Holmes of _A Study in Scarlet_ suddenly reveals his bohemian, dramatic side in the new novella-length mystery Doyle wrote for the _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_. This reinvented Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Wilde) indulges in both morphine and cocaine and cites Goethe—demonstrating a broad appreciation of world literature despite having zero knowledge of literature in _A Study in Scarlet_ , according to Watson's observations.

Another veiled portrait of Oscar Wilde can be found in the same story (which was first published under the title _The Sign of the Four_ and was later reserialized as _The Sign of Four_ ) in the figure of Thaddeus Sholto…

Her sleep-deprived mind begins to ask both Doyle and Wilde what they're thinking of her desire to steal a married man whose children and wife she likes or even loves. Doyle is appalled (he has grown up with noble knights and the idea of pure, chivalrous love) while Wilde tells her to go for it: _We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars… To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all…_

c.

Conan Doyle might not have been a mediocre writer—his Sherlock Holmes short stories are of astonishingly high artistic quality—but who but illiterates and fanatic Sherlock Holmes fans with little appreciation of prose would get the idea to put Doyle on the same literary and intellectual level as Wilde?

If one ignores the figure of Sherlock Holmes and the dynamic between Holmes and his "Boswell"—the two brilliant formulas on which the whole Sherlock Holmes canon was built—one has to admit that _The Sign of Four_ was a forgettable run-of-the-mill mystery and romantic adventure with a dash of exoticism (and it's difficult to say whether _A Study in Scarlet_ , the first Sherlock Holmes novel, which rightfully flopped, was better or worse). _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , the novel Wilde wrote for the _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_ after that "golden evening", on the other hand, is indisputably an all-time classic, one of the greatest books ever written.

Oscar Wilde claimed that "if one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all"—and Oscar Wilde was right. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is a book one can enjoy reading over and over again. _The Sign of Four_ is a book one rereads because one has forgotten what happened.

The Sherlock Holmes novels didn't offend the moral sensibilities of the British press, however, whereas _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ was censored by the magazine before publication (they cut out about five hundred words without Wilde's knowledge). In view of the reaction of the British reviewers to the censored version of the novel, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Wilde merited prosecution for defending his work. While Doyle was well-paid and admired and respected, Wilde died after his prison term in disgrace and poverty and solitude, from meningitis and heartache.

 _There is nothing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written._

 _The books the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame._

 _The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death._

 _I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there._

Observations which could only have been made by Oscar Wilde and certainly not by Conan Doyle—Doyle believed in imperialism and moral absolutes and had grown up with tales of noble knights who rescued fair maidens even if it meant to bring the maidens back to the dragons they had been trying to escape. But when Arthur Conan Doyle, still happily married to his invalid wife, encountered Jean Leckie on March 15th 1897, it was love at first sight. And for ten years, this forbidden love and his fight against it will be the main source of agony in Doyle's life.

c.

* * *

A/N: Long chapter today. But I've made it in time for the third prompt (Alcohol, Poison). Yay!


	4. Green

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

 **Becoming Conan**

 _by FS_

* * *

 ** _Chapter 4: Green_**

* * *

Shinichi hates lies and disguises with all the passion the word "hate" connotes. Disguises and lies are only bearable when they serve the purpose of solving a mystery. The worst memories of his time as Conan are all recollections of the elaborate lies he had to invent. But his disguises back then were child's play compared to his disguises now.

c.

Green is the colour of camouflage, the Professor declares as he proudly demonstrates all the features of the walking wheelchair he has designed with the help of his inventor friend. Green is the colour of harmony and health, revitalization and rebirth. It's the perfect colour to convey safety and control, which is the main reason why he has chosen it.

Although it's supposed to be reminiscent of grass and branches and leaves, the walking wheelchair with the ominous name WW1 and its greyish specks of green resembles a military vehicle more. There is some irony in the fact that the colour that is most useful in war is also the colour of peace.

"It looks horrible," Shinichi states, succumbing to his old characteristic bluntness. "But what really matters is whether it works! Are you sure that it's safe enough to be tested?"

The Professor is absolutely sure, but Shinichi insists on testing the device himself. Since it comes with a sunshade and isn't made for his height, however, the one who ends up testing it is her.

It works like a charm (sitting in it feels like being carried by a personal robot servant), but she is still relieved when she can finally climb out. Being confined to a wheelchair for life is a terrible fate—especially for people who have once been professional athletes.

c.

It has taken Shiho a while to convince the Professor that he needs a shower in the morning; but now Shinichi and she are finally alone again, sipping hot chocolate and coffee together—their daily treat. Although they both love to sleep in, they've been up with the lark these days. Sometimes they wake up early enough to watch the diffused summer dawn light creep through the living room's Venetian blinds; and she wonders if he, too, has begun to regard these early breakfasts as miniature visions of a shared future.

He is quiet today, which is only a natural reaction if he has deduced that Christie has overheard his talk. Sera-san and he must have discussed the matter via video chat without noticing Christie, who can walk like a cat if she wants to.

"I've begun to read the paper you recommended," she begins. It's easier to talk about Doyle and approach the matter in metaphors and parallels than to address it directly.

"Have you finished it yet?" His eyes are gleaming in the same manner as they do whenever he tackles a new case.

"Not yet," she admits, to his visible disappointment. "I couldn't get past the first pages at first… but I've arrived at the part where Doyle met Jean Leckie."

"Bang bang!" They've been interrupted again, this time by a person who will be even less inclined to take a hint. The troublemaker is dressed in an army ranger costume complete with military boots, helmet, moulded bullet belt, jungle kombatter rifle, and binoculars. Accustomed to making a statement wherever he goes, he has also chosen to show off his gross musical insensitivity with his poor choice of entrance music: the melodramatic but rather shallow song "Bang Bang", which was written by Cher's then-husband Sonny Bono and would later feature in _Kill Bill_.

While Shiho couldn't care less about the original version of the song, she likes the _Kill Bill_ version of it. The laboriously crawling rhythm, the mournful melody, Nancy Sinatra's husky, offbeat voice, and the slightly off-tuned tremolo guitar all indicate that charm is a lucky byproduct of tiny imperfections which are _almost_ perfect—an outlandish concoction good enough to be great and bad enough not be sterile.

 _Music played and people sang_

 _Just for me the church bells rang…_

A self-indulgent ode to the sense of abandonment—the certainty of having been left in the dust by the fickleness of a loved one who didn't even care enough to explain.

In contrast to Chandler (who is too gentle) and Christie (who is too dramatic), Hattori-kun's brat (only called "Hammett" by everyone), lives up to all of his nickname's promises. At seven, he is already as hard-boiled and dry as any child detective can be—doing only what he wants whenever and wherever he wants to do it (and—so his long-suffering parents report—already leaving a string of broken hearts which dates back to the first kindergarten he visited).

"Bang bang! I shot you down, bang bang!…"

The jungle kombatter rifle is now pointing at her cup. Hammett's movements are like his father's quick and precise. He has the most attractive voice and the prettiest emerald eyes, but Shiho has known him long enough to become immune to his smile.

"Please!" She shoots him a warning glare. "If you don't leave my hot chocolate alone, I'll make sure your parents won't need the next birthday invitations!"

The jungle kombatter rifle is gone in an instant, and the proud army ranger tosses her the phone he has fished out of his pocket with a wicked grin. Shinichi barely manages to catch it before it lands in her lap. "Three missed calls from 'Rei'!" announces The Brat.

"Rei?" Shinichi's brow furrows. "Furuya Rei?" The temperature in the room seems to fluctuate for a moment when he considers all the implications of this new piece of information.

To demonstrate his abysmal timing, Rei chooses this moment to send Shiho a message.

Shinichi sighs, rolls his eyes, and hands her the phone without glancing at the screen.

"He sometimes asks me for help when he has to deal with an especially hard case." She inwardly winces. In situations like this, explaining only seems to make things worse.

"Interesting," Shinichi laconically comments.

"Interesting?" Now she is the one who furrows her brow.

"He usually doesn't want help from anyone," Shinichi elaborates before throwing a listless glance at his watch. It's time to wake up Ran, he says. "Otherwise we'll miss our ferry although I'm glad she can sleep so well."

She can tell that her chances of luring a confession out of him are gone—he has retreated into his shell of chivalry and correctness. Sipping her cold chocolate, which she no longer enjoys, Shiho wonders how well she knows him (obviously not as well as she thought). She also wonders how well Ran knows him (probably not very well either). Like a chameleon that can turn almost any colour and change from red to green within twenty seconds, he can't keep a hue for long—and just like a chameleon that has been caught and put into a glass terrarium, he will always feel trapped in a marriage.

She is angry at him for no apparent reason. Perhaps she is irked by the realization that he will brush her aside and return to Ran at the first perceived offence.

Is he only interested in her as a means of escape? Is she only interested in him because he has never been available? She has been pining for him for so long and has read so many (horrendously bad) articles with titles like "Why did I fall in love with an unavailable man" so often that she no longer knows what she feels. And for an agonizing moment, she questions and doubts his feelings for her and her feelings for him and their ability to live up to the challenge of maintaining a committed relationship. Disturbingly, she can sympathise with Ran more than with Shinichi because the mere attempt at talking with Shinichi about his feelings is like pulling teeth.

Hammett, the inveterate little charmer, rubs his dark head against her arm and, when she turns to look at him, showers her with kisses. Delighted by the unexpected and genuine expression of affection (maybe she has been starving for love), she lets him kiss her.

c.

John Clay's friend and partner in crime, who escaped the law in "The Red-Headed League", was called "Archie".

"Archie", so Shiho recalls, was also the name of Agatha Christie's first husband, the man who would later inspire the Queen of Crime to write _Sad Cypress_ when he left her for a younger woman.

Misfortunes are gregarious monsters that seldom come alone. Agatha Christie knew this as well since she wrote in her autobiography: _As so often in life, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong._ Her mother, whom she loved dearly, had just died, and turning out Ashfield—the house of her happy childhood—reduced her "to such a nervous state that [she] hardly knew what [she] was doing". While she was working "like a demon", as she wrote in her autobiography, her husband stayed in London, waiting for her to be done so that they could go to an Italy trip. And when she was done and he joined her for the holiday, he was a perfect stranger who _went through the motions of ordinary greetings_.

It took Agatha a while until Archie explained to her what had happened. He had fallen in love with the young secretary of an acquaintance of theirs, and he needed a divorce so that he could be free to marry the girl. Having grown up with the idea that marriage was sacred and having also witnessed the extraordinarily happy marriage of her parents, which lasted until her father's death, Agatha asked Archie to get over it. Such things happened—and friends and relatives told her that it was absurd. They were all convinced that Archie would get over it since he loved her and their daughter, but he didn't.

Even years later Agatha would try to rationalize, to explain to herself what had gone wrong and why her husband had suddenly fallen in love with another woman. _Was it just fate with him, falling in love with her quite suddenly? He had certainly not been in love with her on the few occasions we had met her previously. He had even objected to my asking her down to stay, he said it would spoil his golf. Yet when he did fall in love with her, he fell with the suddenness with which he had fallen in love with me. So perhaps it_ was _bound to be._ (from _Agatha Christie: An Autobiography_ ).

Since he was devoted to their daughter Rosalind, Archie returned after a fortnight to save the marriage. Despite his efforts, however, he simply couldn't endure it.

 _But his coming back was, I think, a mistake, because it brought home to him how keen his feeling was. Again and again he would say to me: 'I can't stand not having what I want, and I can't stand not being happy. Everybody can't be happy—somebody has got to be unhappy.'_

 _I managed to forbear saying, 'But why should it be me and not you?' Those things don't help._ […]

 _So, after illness, came sorrow, despair and heartbreak. There is no need to dwell on it. I stood out for a year, hoping he would change. But he did not._ (from _Agatha Christie: An Autobiography_ ).

c.

Somebody has got to be unhappy, and as long as it was only her, Shiho knew she had to endure it. Now that she knows that Shinichi might be suffering as well, it's two people's happiness against one person's happiness if she doesn't count the children (couldn't they raise them together—couldn't everyone get along?); or it's three people's happiness against two people's happiness if she counted them (how are the children going to deal with the divorce of their parents?)…

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to discover how silly this is!

Instead of clinging to him while he was overwhelmed by guilt, Agatha Christie should have let go of Archie the moment he told her he was in love with the girl.

The children loved the ferry; the adults were all unimpressed. Everyone liked the stroll through the city; but no one but Hammett (who bought a cup, to Shiho's surprise) has bought anything. There will be time for souvenirs in a few days, when Sonoko-obachan comes, Shinichi appeases the twins, who regret not buying the weather vanes they wanted. Hattori-kun, Kazuha-san, and Hammett are staying in the city for a night to visit a friend while the Professor, Shiho, Ran, Shinichi, and the twins are returning to the isle via steam train (a popular local attraction).

c.

In a world where most modes of transportation have lost their charm (planes conjure up horror movies that open at the check-in; cars bring to mind lurid sex scenes, accidents, and traffic jams), the train might be the last setting of romance. It summons up centuries of world literature ( _Anna Karenina_ , _The House of Mirth_ , _Strangers on a Train_ , _Murder on the Orient Express…_ ); and it's a symbolic departure or arrival, or an important journey in life. A train, especially a steam train, still offers real adventure with minimal bureaucracy and reasonable comfort. It's the place where people—strangers, relatives, friends, lovers, enemies—meet or part.

In a train, anything can happen.

Shinichi and Shiho are sitting close together but not too close together, with legs and elbows barely touching, each holding a child in their lap. In front of them, Ran is messaging Sera-san, who has arrived too early and is asking her hosts whether she can just break into their holiday chalet.

She can, obviously, which is why no one even attempts to stop her.

"Masumi-obachan has arrived," Ran tells the twins.

"Obachan has arrived," Christie echoes while Chandler thoughtfully chants, "Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here…"

"Yes, she is here," Ran smiles. "Aunty 'Seri' is here."

"Seri is here," Shinichi chuckles, whereupon Ran whispers like an echo, "Seri is here, Seri is here…"

It's just an in-joke of the family. But there it is—the familiar, sharp stab of jealousy. Against the tomboyish "Seri" out of all people!

Something about that harmless "Seri is here" stirs a curious memory, but Shiho doesn't know which memory it is. It must be something important she has read about once, something which continually repeats itself over and over again in her mind to the rhythm of the train. _Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here…_

Her eyes automatically fall shut as she tries to remember, and _Seri is here_ conjures up images of a summer night and a famous secret literary kiss. She wonders in which famous book it was. But no matter how hard she tries, she can't see it.

 _Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn of flowers in it…_

Which famous writer has written this?

c.

"Don't fall asleep!" Shinichi nudges her. "If you fall asleep now, you'll be in the deep sleep stage just when we have to get off the train."

Shiho would like to take a picture of his head in front of the window glass, but the dappled sunlight in the woods passing by the windows of the steam train is too perfect as the background—one can get sick of things that are so perfectly beautiful. Also, what's good in life isn't necessarily good in art (paintings with a lot of green vegetation aren't popular, for instance.)

Da Vinci's La Gioconda—the Mona Lisa—is an exception. But then again, da Vinci will always be an exception.

Shiho wonders if she could spend her whole life in the woods or in paradise if paradise was really a garden—most probably not. None of her friends (with the exception of Ran, but does she consider Ran a friend?) will end there.

c.

 _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ , published by the Penguin Sherlock Holmes Collection, is a small green paperback with a serpent on the title page. Shiho has been carrying it in her handbag, just in case the train came late and the kids wanted her to read aloud to them. Now Chandler is playing with it like he always plays with books, studying it in detail from the outside without opening it before he has filed away all the sensory inputs.

The serpent, which is given the colour green, is often associated with seduction or knowledge, Shinichi informs her. And yet the serpent was a symbol of undying love for the Ancient Romans. In Victorian times, the cult of serpent jewelleries symbolizing everlasting love was revived when Prince Albert proposed to Queen Victoria with a ring in the image of a snake set with emeralds—a cult Sherlock Holmes must have known about since Holmes was the sort of fan who would decorate his walls with bullets spelling "V. R." (for "Victoria Regina").

Arthur Conan Doyle never stated explicitly what the snake meant to Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle must have played with the reader's expectations when he inserted the serpent into "A Scandal in Bohemia", the short story featuring Irene Adler.

c.

 _The woman_ , whom Holmes was never in love with although she was the only one for him (so Watson hastened to explain while he was talking to the Victorian readership about a married woman), lived on the (fictitious) Serpentine Avenue, in the (fictitious) Briony Lodge. Irene Adler, like Jean Leckie, was a beautiful mezzo-soprano—not a contralto like most fans believe. A "contralto" in Doyle's times was a dramatic mezzo-soprano, who often sang and acted male roles like the actresses of the Japanese Takarazuke Revue.

Is life writing fiction, Shiho wonders, or is fiction writing life? Would Doyle have fallen in love with Jean Leckie if Holmes hadn't loved Irene Adler?

"When Sherlock Holmes refused to accept the serpent ring the king offered him as payment and asked for Irene Adler's photo instead, he did it to keep a reminder of a weakness," argues Shinichi. "It's been left to the reader's interpretation what a weakness it was—but of course a Victorian reader would have associated the two serpent images in the short story with greed and everlasting romance."

As much as she likes to ruffle his feathers, Shiho has to agree. Since Holmes refused the one serpent, it was natural to assume that Holmes embraced the other. The Victorian audience was familiar with the art of juxtaposition in art and literature.

c.

The literary figure of the Detective isn't the average human—the figure of the Detective is a powerful shaman—and Doyle must have realized that a comfortable marriage based on fondness and friendship like his marriage with Louisa wouldn't have satisfied his consulting detective. The ability to stay loyal to a secret unrequited love forever elevated Sherlock Holmes to a godlike status while the ordinary marriage life was more suitable to Dr Watson.

"What colour are you today?" Chandler asks.

"I'm Green," Shiho gloomily admits with a sidelong glance at Shinichi. "As green as I can be with envy and greed!"

But green is also the colour of the Mona Lisa (did da Vinci really paint it for the lady's former lover—after they both had been married off to people they didn't love?), and the colour of enduring love, Shiho mentally adds.

"It's all right to be green from time to time," Shinichi agrees. "If it's good enough for the Serpentine Avenue in 'A Scandal in Bohemia', it's good enough for me."

c.

* * *

A/N: Argh, this chapter was so long that I had to stay up all night to write it. *dead


	5. Blue

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

 **Becoming Conan**

by FS

* * *

 ** _Chapter 5: Blue_**

* * *

He ought to despise secrets just as much as he despises lies since lies and secrets usually go hand in hand with each other. Secrets are to Shinichi what Pandora's Box was to Pandora, however—it's impossible for him to resist uncovering a secret even when he senses that he won't be able to deal with his discoveries.

c.

"So why is Furuya-san 'Rei'?" asks Shinichi as they're climbing the stairs together. Although the "lift" (which is actually a cable car) has been repaired, the Professor and Ran are determined to test the Professor's invention. Shinichi felt uneasy at first since the few steps leading to the porch where they tested the walking wheelchair this morning could hardly be compared to the long winding staircases connecting the beach and the woods on a slope, and he was sceptical about his ability to catch both Ran and the Professor if they should fall—but WW1 can handle the problem just fine. No sooner did it detect the first obstacles than it raises its wheels, lowers its legs, and extends its feet and claws. And now, after striding up the stairs taking four steps at once, it's waiting for them at the top of the last staircase with robotic smugness, its eye-shaped reflectors glittering a brilliant sapphire in the late afternoon sun.

"He is 'Rei' because it simply happened… and afterwards it seemed silly to revert to using family names, you know: 'Furuya-san!' 'Miyano-san!'"

His eyes darken. With hindsight, she shouldn't have told him—but it's too late now.

"I'd never have guessed!" he remarks after a moment's sullen silence. "I've always thought he was in love with your mother, to be honest."

That hit home—and of course the seemingly throwaway comment wasn't an innocent observation. A sidelong glance at him shows her that he even has the impertinence to smirk. "You weren't available," she was going to say, but the smirk made her reconsider.

"We still see each other sometimes," she tells him instead. She might as well admit it before he discovers it himself.

"Ah, to help him solve his cases?"

He is trying to sound as natural as possible, but she can still discern the mounting dread in his voice.

To tell, or not to tell… as if he hadn't guessed it already…

"Yes, cases most of the time—although sometimes we go out for dinner when he is in the vicinity." She knows she is being ruthlessly honest, but she doesn't want to lie to him at the moment, not even by omission. It must be the vast blue sky under which they've been walking—any statement uttered beneath such a sky sounds like an oath. Fluffy white cumuli are drifting along the azure sea of light. A sight which could almost induce her to believe in heaven.

"You're still seeing him?"

This time, he hasn't even tried to hide the disappointment in his voice. To lie, or not to lie, that is the question…

"No, not really."

His glare—a flash of steely blue from bright grey eyes—is a clear indication that he isn't satisfied by either the situation or the explanation he gets. But since the Professor has sidled up to them in the meantime, she isn't going to dwell on all the connotations of "not really".

c.

Instead, she rapidly changes the topic of their chat; and by the time they arrive at the top of the last staircase, they're immersed in a discussion about "The Red-Headed League", notably John Clay and his partner.

"Archie didn't escape the law," Shinichi hastens to dispel her misconception about the ending of "The Red-Headed League". "Holmes said three men were waiting for Archie at the door."

A quick rereading of the ending in her green paperback shows Shiho that Shinichi is right. John Clay and Archie are going to be reunited in jail and most probably at the gallows as well if she interprets Clay's "Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it" correctly.

"It's been too long since I read it… I must have misremembered it because I wanted it to end differently," she laments—and Ran, who is rolling next to them along the tree-lined road, chimes in: It's especially infuriating because Mr Windibank (the rat!) escaped the law in "A Case of Identity" directly afterwards. The only consolation is the possibility that Conan Doyle might have tried to direct the readers' attention to the law's injustices. This is unlikely, however, as Doyle wouldn't have had Holmes condone the injustices of his time.

"Holmes helped the police arrest Clay because he had a past grudge Doyle didn't elaborate on," Shiho points out. "It wasn't only about justice—it was about getting even with an old rival as well, which only makes it harder to digest."

"It's interesting that you _both_ are on Clay's side," Shinichi testily returns. "He was described as 'a remarkable man', but he was also said to be someone who could 'crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next'. He wasn't only a thief and a forger—he was a murderer as well. It's easy to be blinded by his talents, but should Holmes have overlooked his ruthlessness because he was loyal to his friend? Clay was Holmes' enemy, and Holmes caught him in the act just by observing trivial details everyone else would have overlooked. Clearly Holmes was the hero of the story, not Clay! But I suppose there is more than one female reader who has been ensnared by Clay's charm and panache."

"It's only natural, isn't it? We don't learn which murders Clay has committed—we like everything we see of him… And he accepts his defeat with so much grace that everyone but Holmes pales in comparison."

The "everyone but Holmes" appeases Shinichi a bit. Not enough, though, as they spend half of the sandstone road discussing the ending of the story. The allusion to capital punishment only makes the contemporary reader feel more empathy with Clay and his friend, Ran argues, and Shinichi must agree with her, albeit grudgingly. He doesn't agree that Holmes should have let Clay escape, however. Clay knew what he was risking and still ran the risk. Holmes was the better man who brought about Clay's downfall—that's all there is to it.

"Even Holmes said that, if he hadn't become a detective, he might have become a burglar," Ran insists. The gulf between Clay and Holmes isn't as huge as it seems: The living conditions in Victorian London were so severe that it was easy to end up as beggars or thieves, or prostitutes if you weren't lucky. There was no security and no chance of advancement for people born into a low social class. Considering the working conditions back then, it's difficult to condemn Clay.

"He claimed to be of noble birth but his name is John Clay," Shiho remarks. "'Clay' is an interesting speaking name, especially in combination with 'John', one of the most common British names. I think we can safely conclude that Clay's name alludes to the fact that everyone is just 'made of clay' regardless of their social standing and birth. Or Conan Doyle meant to say that Clay was a man of humble birth who strove too hard after the life of a noble man. Clay's name also brings to mind the phrase 'feet of clay' alluding to hidden faults and weaknesses which aren't visible at first glance. Most probably, Doyle meant to put all these ideas into the reader's mind—ambiguity in brevity is a powerful tool."

"I prefer the unambiguous things in life!" Ran darkly says. "And one of those things is my conviction that no human being should be allowed to extinguish—or allowed to aid in extinguishing—another human life. I can't stand seeing Sherlock Holmes arresting John Clay knowing that Clay would have been hanged. Some things should never be decided by humans! No human being should be allowed to exert the powers of heaven."

c.

To lighten the mood, Shiho jokes that if Clay was modelled on the same person who inspired Doyle to create Moriarty, Clay must have escaped from jail. To her delight, the mental image successfully lifts Ran's spirits.

Even though Shiho perceives a certain irony in the fact that she is shooting herself in the foot by settling Shinichi and Ran's argument, she feels strangely happy. It is difficult to be unhappy beneath a perfectly blue sky—the expansiveness of it seems to dwarf petty human concerns. For the first time in her life, Shiho can believe the statistical claim that blue is the world's most popular colour—there is no other colour which expresses such absolute tranquility and peace. Their group stop for a moment at a bench with a view facing the sea in the distance. Under them, beyond the wooden balustrade, the green slope seems to lead to an endless abyss. But under the blue sky reflected in the ever-changing blues and greens of the sea, the only problems which matter are the most profound of humanity's questions, or _the most profound question_ , according to Blaise Pascal, the great mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian, and writer.

 _To be, or not to be: that is the question:_

 _Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer_

 _The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,_

 _Or to take arms against a sea of troubles_

 _And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,_

 _No more; and by a sleep to say we end_

 _The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks_

 _That flesh is heir to…_

(from _Hamlet_ , by William Shakespeare)

c.

" _Never waste energy on worries and negative thoughts._ […] Sure my back screwed me up good for a year but with every adversity comes a blessing because a shock acts as a reminder to oneself that we must not get into a state of routine." (from _Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living_ , by Bruce Lee).

c.

The twins, who are eager to see "Seri" again, are now running along the sandstone road. The neck sunshades of their legionnaire's caps are fluttering in the breeze like conqueror's flags that retreat further and further with every second passing by. Shinichi automatically follows them but hesitates after the first steps. I'll watch over them—you can stay with your wife, Shiho offers when he turns round to look at her, but before she can turn her words into action, Ran has grabbed her wrist.

"Just go!" Ran tells Shinichi, in a voice which sounds harder and hoarser than Shiho remembers it.

Later, after Shinichi and the Professor have gone after the twins as Ran urged them to, Ran and Shiho remain at another bench for a minute to take some good shots of the woods. The photos are only Ran's excuse to stay behind; and Shiho, who is aware of this, waits patiently (albeit anxiously) for Ran to begin.

"Bruce Lee once damaged his sacral nerve due to overtraining," Ran says at last. "But despite his doctors' prognoses, he managed to return to martial arts and got even better than before."

"Doctors don't know everything," Shiho agrees. "Sometimes patients miraculously recover—"

"Bruce Lee didn't 'recover'!" Ran snaps. "He learned to live with the aftermath and to heal as well as he could and to make use of what remained… but that's not what I meant to say…" Her eyes roam the woods and the sky with grim despair. "His fans always praise his ability to 'recover'—but most fans don't acknowledge what really happened: Bruce Lee wanted to know whether he would ever be able to walk again, and the doctors said 'maybe'…"

"Ran!" interjects Shiho in horror. "Don't—"

"He was very candid about what he would have done if they hadn't said 'maybe'—if that little spark of hope had been denied him. He said he would have found a river to jump in." Ran activates the walking wheelchair by pressing the blue button to her left; and they return to the road in silence until she can bear to speak again.

"Sometimes I wanted to do it so badly! I only didn't do it out of guilt, or for fear—because Shinichi can't take care of them alone, because both of them need me!"

Shiho rummages in her mind for the right response, but she can barely forbear to say, "I wish this hadn't happened to you but to me." Ran would have misinterpreted the exclamation as Shiho being selflessly noble—missing the self-serving aspect in Shiho's thought. If the situation were reversed—so Shiho can't help thinking—Shinichi would leave his wife to take care of her. And all of a sudden, it strikes her with startling clarity that Shinichi would never abandon the woman who seems to need him, no matter how much he longs to do it. The impact of the realization drives tears into her eyes, but she manages to blink them away before Ran can see her cry.

c.

"What colour are you today?" asks Hammett (who returned to the chalet with his parents yesterday morning) as he settles in Shiho's lap. The twins are off to play with "Seri" again, having forgotten about Shiho the instant Sera-san appeared—like father, like children!

"Blue," Shiho sighs. "I'm definitely blue today."

"Sad?" Hammett asks, taking her chocolate ice-cream out of her hand since she doesn't appear to need it. The boy isn't a fan of redundant social customs, but Shiho is getting along with him better than with anyone else now that she is blue.

"Not sad, but blue. Extremely blue." "Sad" sounds so harmless—she was sad when she noted that the water was still too cool to swim in.

She would cry if she were alone, but she is never alone now unless she is in the bathroom, not even at night. Sera-san's overwhelming enthusiasm beats even her insomniac tendencies. In the morning, it's Hammett with his all-consuming infatuation who exhausts her.

"As blue as the sky," Hammett offers before he boldly kisses her lips. The cool touch feels so unexpectedly pleasant and sweet in the summer heat that she hurriedly pulls away.

"As blue as the sea," she says, indicating the water in front of them, which is a shimmering turquoise or cobalt or ultramarine depending on the amount of light reflecting off the waves. "As blue as the Blues."

"True blue!" he winks before leaning in. "Like me when it comes to you."

"Don't you dare to try it again, you cutest of all devils, you!"

c.

When you entrust one person with the task of protecting your secrets, you will lose the desire to open up to another—sharing secrets brings two people together and isolates them from the rest of the world. Shiho is suffering the consequences of this truth now that "Seri" has barged into Shinichi and Ran's refuge with her brilliant smile and her ringing laugh, turning the heads of almost all adults and kids and becoming an ever-present figure Shiho can't tolerate seeing and hearing. To a person like Shiho, it's easy to be intimidated by "Masumi-obachan"—brazen, happy, wild "Seri", who has the sort of reckless abandon which makes the phrase "the sky is the limit" sound wimpish. Even if Shiho weren't unnerved by Sera Masumi's never-ceasing energy, the very fact that Shinichi has withdrawn from her completely and is spending all his free time with his new guest would have devastated her.

"Devastated" may be the wrong word for what she is feeling—but she can't find the right word now that all words are obscured by a bank of fog and she has difficulty in recalling the simplest tasks (has she wiped the table, brought out the trash, applied sunscreen to her neck…?). Sera-san matches Shinichi much better than either Ran or Shiho does. And though "Seri" talks nonstop, is upsettingly nosy, needs to share everything with friends (from her favourite brand of chocolate to her current bra size), and runs about the holiday chalet (or rather the whole isle) in Energizer Bunny fashion doing outrageous things ("Seri" has joined Hammett in shooting sunscreen bottles from the wicker chairs and has also helped the twins bury Shinichi's new underwear), Shinichi doesn't mind at all.

Out of the blue, it occurs to Shiho that her friendship with Shinichi no longer exists. The most telling indication of this is his tendency to turn to Sera-san instead of her for advice and consolation. She, too, has been messaging Rei regularly for months. Between Shinichi and her, what remains is the remembrance of the old intimacy and a fleeting platonic romance which has passed faster than a summer breeze.

In this cool part of the world, the wind has already become colder.

She opens _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ in the hope that Moriarty can take her mind off these obsessive ruminations, but even the beginning of Watson's "The Final Problem" only reminds her of her own problem.

 _It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigations, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record…_ (from _The Final Problem_ by Arthur Conan Doyle).

c.

When she messages one person, she can't talk with another—she can only focus on one thing at a time these days. Missing her sporadic tête-à-têtes with Shinichi, she is growing addicted to her habitual conversations with Rei. She even confides to Rei that she has begun to despise herself—for her antipathy towards Ran and Sera-san, both of whom are very kind to her; for obsessively stalking Shinichi whenever he is alone only to find him running in the opposite direction (to either Sera-san or his wife); for her gradual loss of self-respect and integrity (why does she obsess over a married detective out of all people?). It's easier to talk to Rei for the sole reason that Rei, too, is dark—forever tortured by the revenge he didn't get and the suicide of his best friend, which he can no longer blame on anyone…

"Tell me about Rei!" Hammett demands, and offers her his cheek to kiss. Since she doesn't allow him to kiss her spontaneously anymore (the cheeky brat would only misuse her kindness), he has begun to fetch his kisses like other children fetch ice-cream.

It's impossible for her to resist a kid who is so fully convinced of the beautiful elite's prerogative, so she humours him.

"Rei is my friend," she explains after a few pecks, condensing four months of courtship and one week of illusionary bliss into the simple term. She was intensely infatuated with the beautiful man before she realized that all the things she liked about him were things which reminded her of a certain detective. Discovering that he saw a shadow of her mother in her was the final death blow to a relationship which would have been fantastic if they both hadn't been too proud and too self-aware.

"A _special_ friend," Sera-san meaningfully comments. "And a very good-looking one to boot!"

"Prettier than me?" Hammett asks Shiho with a pout.

"No, you're definitely prettier, but you're also worse!"

Pleased by the double compliment, the little rascal smirks.

Meanwhile, Sera-san has planted herself beside Shiho although she could have sat in Ran's XL-sized roofed wicker chair, which is much more spacious. Annoyed by the closeness she hasn't bargained for but hampered by Hammett, who has made himself comfortable in her lap, Shiho dithers between staying where she is and moving away.

"What colour are you?" asks Hammett "Masumi-obachan".

"Blue, of course," Sera-san beams as her long laugh lines deepen around thick-lashed eyes of the bluest blue. Blue is the colour of freedom, imagination, sensitivity, and expansiveness! How can anyone not be in love with blue?

So they both are blue today—but if Sera-san's blue is an electric blue or a navy blue, Shiho's has a dull greyish tint. Nevertheless, Shiho makes an effort to be pleasant. She isn't trying to cosset Sera-san (she couldn't care less whether Sera-san likes her or not), but she would like to convince herself that she has changed. She can mingle with normal people well now that she no longer needs to fear the Organization.

Surprisingly, chatting with Sera-san is more interesting than Shiho expected. Ultramarine blue—the colour made of pure lapis lazuli (this stone was more precious than gold and caused Vermeer to sink into debt)—leads to discussions about spirituality and divinity and immortality and rebirth; and thus—inevitably and predictably—to Doyle's immortal consulting detective.

c.

Sherlock Holmes is a man who never lived—as the title of a Sherlock Holmes convention points out—but Sherlock Holmes is also a man who will never die. His privileged status is rooted in the myth of The Detective, which he personifies. Unlike Poirot and Marple and other great sleuths of the Golden Age of detective fiction, which followed his reign, Sherlock Holmes didn't give a damn about fairness. Around 1928, SS Van Dine and other writers tried to establish the Rules of detective fiction, the foundation on which future tomes and pyramids of whodunnits would be built. One of the most elementary rules is the demand that "the reader must have equal opportunity with the detective to solve the story". Well, Holmes (or is it Watson, Holmes' amanuensis?) has never, ever, cared enough to give the reader equal opportunity.

Sherlock Holmes will never be on the same level as the reader or as Watson, who addresses his readership as he would address his peers—in the true Victorian way, with the right amount of formality, hypocrisy, and starchiness. In a Sherlock Holmes story, Sherlock Holmes is God. A Sherlock Holmes story isn't a fair challenge to the reader—the reader is only allowed to admire the magic and hold in awe their masterful conjurer.

To eliminate Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had to create the ultimate nemesis—a figure who would serve as the personification of evil, the very last antagonist and also the greatest, whom Holmes' would defeat before he himself was defeated. Since Doyle hated mathematics as a school subject, it was no great surprise that Holmes' nemesis was a mathematician—a diabolical genius with a high-domed forehead similar to Sherlock Holmes' more intelligent brother Mycroft. "It was not murder but justifiable homicide in self-defense," Doyle defended himself in front of his outraged readership for letting Holmes meet his end, "since, if I had not killed him, he [Sherlock Holmes] would have killed me."

A stroke of genius gave Doyle the idea to name Holmes' (Sherrinford Hope's) nemesis "Moriarty". "Mort" is the French term for "Death". The harbinger of death was a dark mirror image of Holmes himself: _a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker_ , who _sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of them_ (Sherlock Holmes's description of James Moriarty in "A Final Problem").

The parallel to Watson's description of the great detective in "The Cardboard Box" is obvious. Holmes "loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour of suspicion of unsolved crime"…

The dark alter ego, or the doppelgänger, to use the German term, was a popular Gothic figure and, by this time, was already featured in Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , or, more obviously and prominently, in Robert Louis Stevenson's _The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_. Holmes resembles Moriarty more than he would ever admit. To solve the crimes, Holmes had to imagine himself as their perpetrator or perpetrators, and a veiled admission of his own inner darkness is reflected in his remark to Watson: _my horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill_.

c.

Shiho was in a halfway bearable mood when she was walking beneath a blue sky, but now that she is lying in this claustrophobic blue-painted bedroom with the clichéd slogan "I have a dream" (in a cursive white font on a pale-blue background), she regrets having talked with Sera-san about Moriarty and death. Shiho, too, has been grappling with her nemesis. Emotionally stable people will never consider suicide—the will to live is to them as natural as breathing—but she has experienced it more than once. She has gone through with it and was reborn as a consequence. And though she sometimes believes she has left it behind, the desire to sleep forever is still hiding inside her, ready to pounce whenever she feels drained of energy.

On a whim, she looks up Agatha Christie's _Sad Cypress_. The title has always intrigued her although she doesn't know the reference. As she suspected, it alludes to death. There is an excerpt from the song in Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ printed as an epigraph, which she missed when she first read the elegiac novel.

 _Come away, come away, death,_

 _And in sad cypress let me be laid…_

(the epigraph to _Sad Cypress_ by Agatha Christie, taken from _Twelfth Night_ , Act II, Scene IV, by William Shakespeare)

c.

One can leave the world wordlessly—tormenting friends and relatives with questions that will never be answered—or leave a tender, heartbreaking suicide note like Virginia Woolf did. The famous writer filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river Ouse when she felt the old depression, which once drove her mad in her late teens, strike again. The public, however, didn't feel compassion for the sick when the sickness was "only" the blues.

Woolf's handwritten farewell letter to her husband ("If anybody could have saved me it would have been you…") was misquoted in the news. Her arguments, taken out of their original context and set against the background of the ongoing war, served as a hot topic for public mockery. Woolf was no longer a depressed writer scared of ruining her loved ones' lives with the potential repercussions of her madness. To the public, she had become a failure and a deserter.

If one leaves this world voluntarily, one should leave it like Sherlock Holmes—plunging down the Reichenbach Falls with one's nemesis and leaving only a walking stick and a silver cigarette case containing a farewell letter addressed to one's "dear Watson".

 _My dear Watson [it said]:_

 _I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my convenience for the final discussion of those questions which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the English police and kept himself informed of our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you._

(from _The Final Problem_ by Arthur Conan Doyle)

c.

Blue suppresses your appetite. This must be true since Shiho can no longer eat anything. The new eating disorder would worry her less if it weren't accompanied by insomnia—not insomnia as she knows it but the total, complete inability to sleep. At dawn, she is sitting at the empty breakfast table, observing with chilling clarity how her hands shake and her heartbeat flutters whenever she tries to stir her chocolate, wondering whether she will die in a few hours since she hasn't slept at all for who knows how long.

She can't remember how many mornings she has sat at the breakfast table alone—it's been an eternity ago that Shinichi last joined her although no more than three days can have passed. She idly wonders whether she should laugh. Hammett, who is touring around the isle with a theatre group that has hired him as their star child actor, would certainly laugh at her dependency, being one of the few lucky people who will never emotionally depend on anybody.

She feels vaguely guilty for this unexplainable nervous breakdown—Ran has more reasons to be depressed than she has. Leafing through Agatha Christie's autobiography only exacerbates her sense of guilt. It reminds her that Ran is suffering as well.

 _A terrible sense of loneliness was coming over me. I don't think I realised that for the first time in my life I was really ill. I was always extremely strong, and I had no understanding how unhappiness, worry and overwork could affect your physical health. But I was_ upset _one day when I was just about to sign a cheque and couldn't remember the name to sign it with. I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland touching the tree._

 _[…]_

 _Many years later, someone going through a period of unhappiness said to me: 'You know, I don't know what is the matter with me. I cry for nothing at all. The other day the laundry didn't come and I cried. And the next day the car wouldn't start —' Something stirred in me then, and I said, 'I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown. You ought to go and see someone about it.'_

(from _Agatha Christie: An Autobiography_ )

c.

Evidently, she can't endure this kind of secret. Talking to Rei, however, doesn't help Shiho cope with the situation. Forget about the jerk, he has only suggested. "I can't leave New York at the moment, but I'll buy you a flight ticket and fetch you from the airport if you come here."

She wonders whether she has been the victim of a terrible joke, as Christie is no longer sure that the sentence she overheard was real. Children are happy creatures with short memories. Once Christie has internalized the lesson that coca cola is only infatuation and natural mineral water true love, the question of whom her otousan is in love with (it's only coca cola, isn't it?) no longer matters to her.

c.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the giant chapter, but I didn't want to split it. At least I've moved parts of it into the next chapter, into which it fits as well. *stoops to cheating xdxd… I'm back from my short holiday and am diligently working on the fic. Hopefully I'll finish it next week.

Thanks a lot to all the lovely readers who have reviewed. :) And _littlelinguistme_ receives an extra cookie for recognizing the Virginia Woolf quote in the last chapter. ;)


	6. Indigo (1)

**Disclaimer:** "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

* * *

 **Becoming Conan**

by FS

* * *

 ** _Chapter 6: Indigo (1)_**

* * *

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw —

For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime — _Macavity's not there_!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,

He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

And when you reach the scene of crime — _Macavity's not there_!

You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air —

But I tell you once and once again, _Macavity's not there_!

...

(from "Macavity: The Mystery Cat", by T. S. Eliot; in _Cats_ , a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber)

c.

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

(from _The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde_ )

c.

* * *

Growing up as a prodigy had its pitfalls. Loneliness among people wasn't easy to endure.

c.

* * *

"What colour are you today?"

Will they never, ever, get sick of this game? When will Mr and Mrs Kudo's twin prodigies learn the meaning of "leave me alone for an hour"?

"Black." Wassily Kandinsky said that black was "like the silence of the body after death, the close of life", and Shiho feels dead-tired today. In theory, she should have long died from the acute lack of sleep. There must have been instances of microsleep she wasn't aware of, or she is already dead and doomed to spend an eternity playing this never-ending colour game in hell.

"Black isn't a colour," Christie objects. Otousan has told her that black is the absence of light. It's a non-colour, the colour of the primordial void.

Shiho could have reminded Christie of the abundant shades of black in nature or told the girl that black was one of the first colours used in art, that Manet liked black for dramatic effect, that one of Van Gogh's final paintings (Van Gogh's final painting?) was the _Wheatfield with Crows_. But before her inner eye, Shiho can suddenly see black crow-like figures in crumpled raincoats silhouetted against Shibuya's flashy neon lights—a scene which reminds her that there are fights she can afford to lose because certain things aren't worth dwelling on.

"I'll be Grey then," Shiho suggests. Grey is moody and sophisticated, tranquil but strong, as timeless as sorrow itself. The name "Grey" (or "Gray") also triggers conflicting emotions: Cordelia Gray, Dorian Gray, Edward Grey…

"It's an achromatic colour," Chandler laconically remarks before refocusing his attention on Shiho's favourite blue fountain pen. "Achromatic colours don't count."

"Fine, I'll be Blue again—a dark shade of it." A tragedy is bound to happen if they don't leave her in peace!

"Reddish or greenish?" Christie asks. The girl has recently learned to paint and is now putting her hard-earned mastery of colour mixing to good use. "Warm or cool?"

"Warm, with a reddish tint!"

"A purplish blue then?"

"Not really purplish, just slightly reddish, and as dark as the night." Shiho drags her palm across her midnight-blue jersey sheets. "I'm this shade of blue."

"It's indigo!" Christie declares with a raised index finger.

"All right, indigo," Shiho relents. The word has been missing from her active vocabulary, which is rapidly dwindling away. "I'm Indigo today."

c.

Indigo, the deep blue shade in azurite, sapphire, sodalite, lapis lazuli, _Isatis tinctoria_ , and the night sky among other things, is generally regarded as the colour of intuition, wisdom, and truth. Shiho's choice of fountain pen ink hasn't been influenced by colour symbolism, but it's difficult for her not to think of indigo's colour meaning now that she is rereading her notes on the most meaningful conversations she has had with Shinichi. She has made every effort to stay accurate by omitting any conjecture on her part and starting all observations with "it seems". Yet ambiguity is inherent in words—even if she had managed to record every word he said, she would be none the wiser.

The bare cold facts suggest two possible explanations: either he has been in love with her for a long time and is now trying to keep a distance between the two of them for fear of escalating the situation—or he is genuinely oblivious, which is the horror vision she doesn't want to consider. Comparing the notes in her latest travel notebook to the notes in her old diaries (she has brought all the seven of them to the holiday chalet for fear of losing them to a burglar while she is away), she concludes that Shinichi's behaviour towards her hasn't changed. There have always been alternating spells of closeness and distance—and the latter wouldn't have unbalanced her mind so much if her hopes hadn't suddenly been raised by Christie's tale.

Shiho has often tried to visualize the scene to make sense of what doesn't seem right to her. Shinichi supposedly said, "I'm only in love with Haibara"; or rather, these few words are the only ones Christie could remember for sure when Shiho sounded her out on the specifics—but this is a sentence which Shiho, for a reason unknown to her, can't imagine Shinichi saying.

Today the indigo ink, which is leaning slightly towards the dreary grey of a downcast night sky, only draws circular mazes on the ivory paper. Complex branching mazes with no way out. Unicursal labyrinths whose dead ends will always contain a Minotaur...

Why is she seeking the assurance that Shinichi loves her? It wouldn't change anything about the reality of their situation: about his two children, whom she adores; about his wife, whom she can't dislike even if she tried to. Pursuing their happiness would mean to face the Minotaur at the end of the labyrinth. Even if Shinichi and she escaped from it unscathed, three people they deeply cared about wouldn't.

c.

Although she is free to go wherever she wants to, she feels like a prisoner on this isle, where nothing happens, trapped in the blue bedroom, where she can't allow herself to drop the mask of nonchalance because she will break into tears the very moment she allows herself to. Above all else, she feels trapped in her own mind. Lost in a fog of despair which doesn't ever seem to disperse, aging rapidly without becoming any wiser.

The easiest way to find out the truth would be asking Shinichi what he has said. But even if she could summon the courage to do it, the very question itself is inappropriate in their situation.

c.

 _For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us._ […] _It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing…_

(from _De Profundis_ , by Oscar Wilde)

c.

Indigo, also the colour of the theatre and the stage, of drama and radicalism, of mystery and intrigue, would have been the right colour for Oscar Wilde, who was individualistic and unconventional to a fault—a free spirit whose far-reaching influence the Victorian society had to destroy. Wilde's greatest fault might not have been his love of freedom or his unapologetic hedonism but his compulsion to express himself, saying what he believed to be the truth despite knowing that _"a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal"_ (from _The Critic as Artist_ , by Oscar Wilde).

"There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over soul and body alike. The first is called Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People," wrote the man who was the inspiration for Doyle's bohemian Sherlock Holmes in _The Soul of Man under Socialism_ in 1891. Was Wilde lucky or unlucky to belong to the few people who had the courage to feel what they weren't supposed to feel, to want what they weren't allowed to want, to rebel against a society that took great care to ensure that love, which had always been a wild animal, was tamed and securely confined in a manageable and well-managed, socially acceptable package with a label?

c.

"Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain," observes Oscar Wilde in _De Profundis_ , the 55000-word letter he wrote to "Bosie", his former love, during his imprisonment in Reading Goal. There is nothing to add to Wilde's writing, and Shiho wonders why she even attempts to chronicle her own suffering, which is humblingly insignificant compared to what Wilde had gone through.

"What are you reading?" asks Sera-san. Shiho is glad that her new roommate (who has been forced on her by external circumstances) hasn't asked, "What are you writing?"

" _De Profundis_ by Oscar Wilde." Preoccupied with suppressing the treacherous urge to close her travel notebook (which is lying open under her small hardcover copy of _De Profundis_ ), Shiho betrays herself by screwing on the lid of her fountain pen.

" _De_ … what?" Sera-san looks desolated. Obviously, "Seri" can deal with dead humans better than with dead languages.

" _De Profundis._ From the depth."

Oscar Wilde's literary revenge on the lover who forgot about him and the Victorian society which imprisoned him wasn't a plea of divine mercy. By the time Wilde was allowed to begin _De Profundis_ , his health had improved slightly compared to his early time in Pentonville, where he suffered from episodes of dysentery and malnutrition. Without Nelson, the prison governor of Reading Gaol, who believed that writing would be more cathartic to a writer than hard labour, _De Profundis_ would never have been written, and Wilde's life might have ended earlier. As things were, Wilde survived Reading Gaol by focusing his creative energies on _De Profundis_.

 _De Profundis_ was certainly not a "love letter" despite being hailed as one of the greatest love letters ever written by critics whose definition of "love letter" entailed illusions of grandeur and petty accusations. It wasn't Wilde's greatest piece either—reading it made Shiho mourn the loss of Wilde's erstwhile humour and wit. And yet... For all its verbose atrocities and its delusions, _De Profundis_ was a terrifying testimony of Wilde's loneliness and grief—unique in its ruthlessly frank depiction of a crippling depression and all the coping mechanisms the author had employed to survive it.

To the horror of their friends and relatives, Oscar Wilde and "Bosie" (the painfully beautiful but also painfully airheaded Lord Alfred Douglas) lived together at the Villa Giudice, Naples, after Wilde served his term in Reading Goal. How the mismatched pair got back together is unknown. Their scandalous and tumultuous relationship eventually ended a few months later, broken up by their respective families under financial threats. Douglas was forced to return home in December 1897, whereupon Wilde moved to a cheap hotel but stayed in Naples for two months before he went to Paris. There he remained until his death in November 1900.

Even though Wilde spent the last two years of his life destitute, he wasn't alone. Robbie Ross, a former lover, continued to support Wilde financially during Wilde's last years. Ross, who would later become Wilde's executor, was also said to have been with Wilde when Wilde passed away.

The epitaph on Oscar Wilde's tomb, chosen by Ross, was taken from Wilde's _Ballad of Reading Gaol_ :

 _And alien tears will fill for him_

 _Pity's long-broken urn,_

 _For his mourners will be outcast men,_

 _And outcasts always mourn._

c.

"It's hard to imagine these words on Sherlock Holmes' tombstone," remarks Shinichi. The latest case (which Christie has named "The Mystery of Oba-chan's favourite Bra") was so demanding that the rational side of Shinichi's brain must be firing up at the cost of his emotional intelligence. Or maybe he is tired of humouring Ran, who has become gloomier and angrier with every passing day.

"Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes!" Ran darkly echoes. "It. Is. Always. Sherlock. Holmes! People travel to Père-Lachaise Cemetery to kiss Oscar Wilde's tombstone because of his writings. I bet none of them cares about the fact that Doyle modelled one aspect of Sherlock Holmes' character on Wilde but _you_!"

"Sherlock Holmes" has become The Name That Shall Not Be Mentioned in this household, and it's easy to see why. Even Chandler has begun to hide the Sherlock Holmes books whenever his mother appears; and Shiho suspects that to both Ran and Shinichi, "Sherlock Holmes" are the magic words to the robbers' cave, the bodiless key which will lead one to either happiness or misery.

"Wilde died from meningitis due to an injury he received at Reading Gaol," says Sera-san in an attempt to shut up Shinichi, who has already opened his mouth to defend his idol. "The hard labour there has killed him! On the one hand, it's impressive how Wilde fought for his right of free expression to the bitter end. On the other hand, it would have been better for him to remain silent. He was far ahead of his time."

"He would have been far ahead of any time," Shiho remarks. Recently, she has been making a great effort to contribute to the conversations at the table so that her friends didn't need to worry about her silence. But whenever she says a word, all heads will instantly turn.

"Touché!" Sera-san laughs. "Seri" is the only adult in the holiday chalet who can still laugh naturally. Everyone else seems to have forgotten how to do it. Ran is only a faint shadow of her former self while Shinichi looks thoroughly exhausted, drained by his marital problems and the double task of working abroad while caring for two children who are just as endearing but also just as obnoxious as he himself must have been when he was small.

"Wilde wasn't jailed for his writings! He was jailed for 'gross indecency'!" Ran corrects Sera-san. There is a certain coldness in her otherwise polite tone, which surprises Shiho, as Ran usually doesn't behave aggressively towards anyone but her own husband. It couldn't have escaped Ran that Shinichi is paying "Seri" more attention than anyone else, Shiho thinks. No one can fault Ran for being jealous of Sera-san in view of Shinichi's puzzling misbehaviour.

c.

 _I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand._ [...] _Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still._

(from _De Profundis_ , by Oscar Wilde)

c.

"Are you all right, Ai-kun?" asks the Professor. "You look ill. Your cheeks are all sunken."

"I'm just tired... Insomnia, as always. Maybe it's the air here."

"But the air is great in this part of the world? Didn't _you_ tell me that the sea air will benefit my health, Ai-kun?"

It must be the shutters which don't close completely: it's harder to fall asleep when it's not completely dark, Shiho suggests, whereupon the Professor promptly goes off to invent new shutters for the chalet windows. Add indigo to your life if you can't sleep—Ran, who has promptly looked up remedies against insomnia, reads aloud. "You shouldn't add indigo to your life if you're depressed, though..."

They're all trying hard to make her life easier—and the harder they try, the worse she feels. Ran has begun to seek Shiho's company now that she feels neglected by her husband. But Shiho, whose capacity of suffering has been put to its utmost stretch, can barely endure a short conversation.

She can only be alone in the bathroom, so she has begun to visit the bathroom frequently, to take long showers because it's the only place where she can cry without being disturbed. Even though Shiho has learned to like Sera-san as a person, having to share a room with Sera-san causes Shiho even more distress than expected. While Shinichi and "Seri" are still inseparable (as though "Seri" were Shinichi's genderbent mirror image), Sera-san has begun to seek Shiho's company whenever Shinichi isn't available.

Feeling "suffocated by unwanted affection" might be the wrong way to put it, but since words have ceased to make sense altogether, Shiho couldn't care less about using the right words to describe what she is feeling. Unable to express herself verbally, she has begun to doodle steel walls and barred doors. Her clumsy drawings remind her that Gin and she did have a few things in common despite their many differences: To both of them, the concept of prison didn't make sense at all.

On TV, another news story of another depressed and radicalized youth running amok in the local trains bludgeoning random passengers to death shocks the twins, who are still grappling with the concept that real life might not be much safer than the fairy tales they're reading. Due to Ran's intervention, they've been spared from the murder scenes their father frequents. She doesn't want her children to turn into unfeeling sociopaths, Ran has argued, whereupon Shinichi has shot back that he hasn't become a sociopath at all despite frequenting murder scenes since he was much younger than the twins are now.

"It's not life which shapes one's character but one's own reactions to whatever happens in one's life," he has claimed. "One always chooses one's fate! That's what free will is about, after all."

"So you mean that nothing which ever happens to you really matters in the end? That all the hapless victims who 'couldn't get over it' are, in the end, just weak and lazy?"

Ran's voice could have cut through a diamond, and Chandler, ever the one to distract the hysterical adults from their abstruse problems, has chosen the moment to inform them that indigo is the colour of justice, tradition, and devotion but also the colour of intolerance, addiction, and fanaticism...

Both of them are right, Shiho remembers thinking, and both of them are wrong. Sometimes it doesn't matter who is right when the truth is hiding somewhere in between although it matters that one person sees the head and the other person sees the tail of it. Although she herself has lost the capacity to think clearly, the talk has triggered a memory of a story she once read: A boy who grew up in a poor family of German Jews once received a savage beating from his father for exchanging an ugly coin for a much shinier coin that was worth much less. This treatment, at that time, in that social circle, was generally considered a good way to turn a foolish child into a respectable human being.

The child did indeed learn his lesson well, for he swore to himself that no one would ever get the better of him again. He grew up to be one of the most dazzling figures of the Victorian Age: a much admired gentleman thief and criminal mastermind, who escaped the Pinkerton Detective Agency during his bounty jumping phase, fled from Sing Sing prison without much ado, planned the most creative and sensational heists, two of which have been alluded to in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories: "The Red-Headed League" (in which a tunnel is built to rob a bank) and "The Final Problem" (in which Holmes recognizes a famous stolen painting).

Casino tables which seamlessly folded into the walls when the police raided the club... Violence-free train and bank robberies, mysterious disappearances of priceless gems and jewellery... Check forging, larceny, safe-cracking, swindling... There was also the gorgeous Georgiana Cavendish portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, which he cut from its frame just for the heck of it (some people would call it an act of love; others, the less romantic ones, would call it burglary and vandalism).

He called himself Edward Grey and Henry J. Raymond, and the name he was born with was Adam Worth—but to the perplexed and awed police, he was "the Napoleon of Crime". Ubiquitous and invisible, yet impossible to overlook due to his sparkling, unimitable, unworldly genius, the "Napoleon of Crime" shared non-violent, effective schemes for twenty-five per cent of the win.

William Pinkerton, the detective who tailed this puzzling maverick from the New World to the Continent, later encountered Arthur Conan Doyle on a ship. And thus the affable, elegant, peace-loving master thief whom Pinkerton chased in a confusing mix of exasperation and admiration was immortalized in the figures of John Clay and James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' arch nemesis.

c.


End file.
